By Sophia Lincoln

The Ethnic Studies Department welcomed Assistant Professor Lydia Heberling as one of CLA’s 2021-22 Ethnic Studies Cluster Hires. This search was designed to attract a group of academics invested in equitable and inclusive teaching and dedicated to scholarly contributions in this area. All have been involved in diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in their departments, our college, the university, and the community.

Herberling’s areas of expertise are in American Indian literatures, with a focus on the literatures from Indigenous California, as well as the emerging field of critical surf studies. Her most recent work focuses on aesthetic and formal innovations in twentieth and twenty-first-century California Native literatures. She is currently working on an article that examines the relationship between colonialism, catastrophic waters, and surfing in three creative non-fiction works by Indigenous writers.

Before coming to Cal Poly, Heberling earned her Ph.D. in English at the University of Washington in 2021. While working on her dissertation, Heberling taught classes on various subjects, ranging from writing composition to Indigenous research methods.

Heberling was drawn to California, where she had grown up, as it became the first state in the nation to pass a law requiring ethnic studies in